


catch my name for kicks

by firelordazulas



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, starts angsty ends just flat out gay, this is gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 16:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7764181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelordazulas/pseuds/firelordazulas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You met Commander Ana Amari nearly 6 months into working for Overwatch. At that point, you were still designing your staff and flight suit, and hadn’t had any need to meet her; plus, it didn’t seem like she particularly cared for the trivialities of introductions. The meeting is brief - the red cheeks and fluttering heart last much longer. It didn’t seem like you made any sort of impact on her, and you don’t see her again for months, not until you’re in the final stages of designing your healing staff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	catch my name for kicks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Madame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madame/gifts).



> warning: idk what tense is or how it works ! have fun tho

You were 30 when you first joined Overwatch. This is before everything goes to shit, before you’re the only one upper level agent left, before the commission assigned to investigate the organisation uses you to tighten the noose. In the beginning you were still a sworn pacifist, still had these high and mighty ideals about what the world should look like. You were young. You forget that about yourself most of all; that at that time you’d experienced so little of what you have now, had known so little of corruption and human nature that you still thought all souls redeemable. Oh, you still believe it isn’t your place to be the reaper, but nor are you to be their angel.

 

You met Commander Ana Amari nearly 6 months into working for Overwatch. At that point, you were still designing your staff and flight suit, and hadn’t had any need to meet her; plus, it didn’t seem like she particularly cared for the trivialities of introductions. The meeting is brief - the red cheeks and fluttering heart last much longer. It didn’t seem like you made any sort of impact on her, and you don’t see her again for months, not until you’re in the final stages of designing your healing staff.

And then, suddenly, you’re seeing her literally everyday - she manages to injure one of her wrists and is the one assigned to teaching you to shoot.

The small pistol you still use to this day was designed and gifted to you by Ana. At first she had been gruff and distant, sticking to using your title and insisting you do the same with her, giving you corrections from where she stood sipping tea from afar in the shooting range. Her interaction with you was lackluster, as was the amount of effort you put into the activity; you didn’t want to learn. You could still remember the Declaration of Geneva, every single line of it. Sometimes you swore you heard it within your dreams in your own voice. You remember muttering it under your breath the first time you picked up your gun. Nowadays, it mostly doesn’t haunt you; it’s only in your nightmares that it comes back to bite.

A month into your lessons there had been little to no progress. She was still calling you Doctor Ziegler and you barely knew how to hold your gun, had no ability to deal with the recoil, no proper stance. You were sulky and immature and unwilling. Ana had been smoking, watching you mostly stand around, sometimes slowly raising your arms to shoot, still jarring your arms on the kick back. The force your gun produced had felt like mountains of weight back then. She’d taken a long, final drag, flicked the cigarette onto the ground with purpose, and then strode on right up to you.

“Neither of us actually want to be here, but I don’t want to have to fill out the paperwork when you die in the field, so let’s try and get this right, hmmm?”

Ana had stepped up right behind you and slid your body into place with hers. It was a cliche waiting to happen, you practically shivering at the feeling of how well muscled she was, the awareness that she could literally snap you like a twig if she wanted, and she was so _tall_ … It’d been the beginning of a long, messy crush, like that of the ones you’d previously had on old instructors. The heated cheeks from your very first meeting had progressed into almost painfully hot. Ana had wrapped one large hand around your waist, the other covering the hand holding your gun, and she had helped you squeeze off your first ever properly sighted round. Of course, her aim had been perfect, and somehow you’d gotten all headshots on the practise dummy. She’d murmured in your ear things about breathing, her hand sometimes going to your diaphragm to demonstrate. You’d almost bitten through your lip trying to remind yourself to concentrate. It had lasted not much longer than 5 minutes, but they’d been both the shortest and longest minutes of your young life.

Shooting hadn’t proven much of a challenge once you’d bother to try at it. You’d thought that’d be it, that you’d never see Ana again, but then Jack had been all ‘you can’t go into the field without combat training!’ and then you’d been pinned under Ana on a training mat almost within the same breath.

Her arm hadn’t been completely healed but that hadn’t stopped her from absolutely wiping the floor with you pretty much the entire time you’d been training. Ana only bothered to teach you the basics: how to get out of most holds, how to punch, all the basic self-defense tye things, but that hadn’t stopped her from laughing at your expense. She’d made sure the two of you sparred at least one a day. It was to ‘test your reflexes’ apparently, but it was more like Ana wanted to unwind and she did that best by flinging you across the gym.

The thing about Ana was that she was surly, sometimes mean-spirited, often harsh, but she was also roguishly charmingly. She had a smirk that could have turned the head of the prettiest of girls. It was easy for you to love her from afar, to treasure the times you had together like the most precious of the elements, to think of every touch and every look over and over. There was no way in any hell that she had been interested in you, however; most of the time she couldn’t even be bothered to address you by name, and anything that may have looked like flirting was just done to boost her own ego. You hadn’t been under any sort of delusion even then. She was the closest you came to human contact for those 3 months, the two of you alone day after day after day, and at the end of the it she had sent you out into the world with barely a look back.

 

Ana had named you Mercy. It felt like every part of your presence at Overwatch had been a gift from her, apart from that which you’d made with your own two hands. Your wings are yours, your staff yours, but everything else… Everything else is a product of her. Even your ability to kill a man was given to you by her, even as you’d tried not to learn how, even as you’d acted like a sulky child who didn’t want to be taught. All things bowed to the force of Commander Amari. You had been her legacy in many ways, just waiting for her to claim you, but even as she left her fingerprints all over you she hadn’t stepped forward.

Of course, when Fareeha had finally started visiting the base, you’d understood why. She didn’t want you as a lover and she didn’t need you as a daughter. You’d thrown yourself into mission duty and tried to forget.

Just before she had ‘died’ she’d come to see you. It had been to extract a promise that you would look after Fareeha when she was gone, abused your love of her without even acknowledging it and of course - _of course_ you had agreed. You’d told it’d be your ‘pleasure.’

Inevitably, you’d broken that promise; Fareeha had looked after herself instead, just as Ana had known she would.

  


You are 50 when you see Ana Amari again. She has white hair now, and more scars, but you still think she’s beautiful. For the first 3 weeks you hate her. That final promise had also been the final straw, and you thought you had walled your heart off from her for the rest of eternity. You’d cried your tears over Ana Amari. However, nothing was that simple when it concerned Ana; she’d flashed that smile, the crooked, smug one that you remembered from those long days in the gym, the long days in the shooting range, the long moments when you passed her in corridors, and you were gone for her all over again.

5 weeks in, after you’ve mostly internally forgiven her, she shows up in your med-bay. She leans against the doorframe, legs long like they always have been, and just looks at you. For a while you ignore her.

“Angela.”

“Oh, so, you’ll call me Angela once you’ve been dead, hmm? Not from the start though, that’d be ridiculous, and unprofessional, and whatever other reasons you had-”

She cuts you off by striding across the room and enveloping you in a hug. She seemed so tall like this, all around you, and you found that her strength was more the lean nature of the starving trying to survive compared to the buff feel of her from Before. You take a shuddering inhale and just breathe into the rough cloth of her regulation jacket.

“I’m sorry.” It’s whispered into your hair, like she can’t bear to say it to your face, and it’s about 100 times more than what you were expecting to get.

“Good.”

The two of you stand together for an indefinite amount of time, just breathing slow and even and in sync.

Finally, she draws away, but keeps her hands on your shoulders. God, how you missed the way the corners of her eyes crinkle as she smiles. “I was hoping you’d join me for some sparring later, for old times sake.”

“Oh, you just wiping the floor with me then.”

She laughed and shrugged and looked so alarmingly _fond_ of you it was almost worrying. “You must be able to hold your own by now surely?”

“If you let me bring my staff, then absolutely.”

Ana positively cackles at that, which sets you glowing. “No, somehow I don’t think that’d be fair at all. Bare fists only, identical to the old times. Just before dinner - we can go a couple of rounds and then get something to eat.”

“Fine, I’ll see you there. But don’t be surprised when I’m no better than I was before.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of some way to surprise me.” And then she winks. _Winks._

How Ana still knew how to ruin you, you didn’t even want to consider. The why - that didn’t even bear thinking about.

 

When you walk into the gym, wearing training clothes that are almost identical to the ones you used to always wear, Ana is already doing some stretches. She’s wearing a tank top and some shorts, which predictably sends your heart into overdrive as all the blood rushes into your cheeks. “Wow, warming up without me. What a fair start.”

“I figured we’d do it identical to the old style.” By this, of course, Ana meant how she used to just attack you at the beginning of all your sessions - and sure enough she’s running at you as soon as you step onto the mats.

You let her come, and the two of you trade blows, testing each other’s mettle after the years apart. Ana is still quick, but she’s less hard hitting - she’s lost a small bit of that aggressive strength that used to be an essential part of her style. When fighting Ana, your only advantage had used to be that you were smaller and faster than her, but now you barely even have that. You manage to keep her at bay for a few minutes, but soon you’re panting and she’s barely broken a sweat.

A clever counter-strike and you’re on the mat, predictably, with Ana hovering over you. Sparring is always an intimate activity, and today is no different, if not worse than all those times before; usually Ana would have just given that smug smirk that she should probably get trademarked and then pushed herself up, leaving you to struggle after her. Today she paused there. Her eyes tracked your face, slowly but with a hint of desperation, as yours had predictably dropped to her lips. You always thought about kissing her when she had you like this. This time, her eyes also drifted, her lids dropping to half-mast, and as she’d sighed you’d felt the breath on your cheek.

It was like an some old time romance. She’d whispered “Please may I kiss you now?” and you’d replied, “Oh, please,” and after 20 years of longing you were finally sliding your hands into that coarse, long hair and pulling her lips to yours. It wasn’t particularly magical. Both of you were slightly sweaty, and Ana’s hands weren’t exactly in the right place for it, but it felt like an end and a beginning and the thousands of other cliches you’d only read about in the books you denied ever having read.

The kiss was short, and after she’d rested her forehead on yours and the two of you had just slowly breathed the same air for a while. It was the closest to a rest either of you had experienced in more than a decade.

**Author's Note:**

> okay i made ana kind of mean ??? also i was gna have a thing abt bitter jaded angela + then it just kind of didnt ,,, happen
> 
> anyway the title is from gravel to tempo - hayley kiyoko


End file.
